The Lucky Ones(78)

Maybe—she hoped and prayed—there was a perfectly good explanation for why Roland hadn’t told her he’d been a patient of Dr. Capello’s. Maybe. But she wasn’t going to wait around for him to volunteer any information. She would find it out for herself if she could.

And that meant seeing Kendra.

Roland had said she lived in Olympia, Washington. It was a heck of a drive, but she could do it in one day if she didn’t dally. And she was in no mood to dally. She gave the ocean and the beach below the scenic viewpoint the most cursory of glances before getting back onto the highway. The ocean would wait. Her questions could not.

She thought of nothing but those questions during the three-hour drive to Olympia. McQueen had confirmed Kendra’s address, and she headed straight there, not even bothering to stop for breakfast. The thought of Roland, her Roland, lying to her had killed her appetite. She had no idea how she was going to face him tonight when she came back to The Dragon. If she went back. Depending on what Kendra revealed today, there was a good chance Allison wouldn’t be going home. She’d even brought the money McQueen had given her just in case she decided to run for it.

She was too nervous to call before showing up at Kendra’s house, so Allison prayed that she would be there when she arrived. Sure enough, when Allison found the house in the Olympia suburbs, a little red Mazda that looked about Allison’s age sat in the driveway. A light was on in the window. Kendra seemed to be home.

Allison took a few steadying breaths after parking her car. She hated bothering people. Hated it. But, she told herself two and then three times, Kendra had been her sister. They’d bonded over books, with Kendra nearly as much of a reader as Allison. Kendra had even let Allison read the books that she’d been assigned for school. Kendra had been a sophomore when Allison had been in the seventh grade. Allison was supposed to read stuff like The Call of the Wild by Jack London—yawn—while Kendra got to read exciting writers like Kurt Vonnegut and Toni Morrison. And they had something else in common now, too. They’d both been with Roland. The only two women on earth who could make that claim.

Unless he’d lied about that, too.

Allison got out of her car.

She walked to the front door of the little brick bungalow and rang the doorbell. It was a cute house with everything in good repair. The paint was new. The lawn was well-maintained. Not surprising. Unlike the rest of the kids, Kendra had always made her bed without prompting from Dr. Capello. She’d said made beds just looked prettier. Allison stiffened in nervousness as she heard footsteps approaching the front door. There was a pause, which sounded to her like the unfastening of several locks, and then the door opened.

It was Kendra who stood across the threshold—Allison recognized her at once. She was taller, of course, but not much taller. The braids with rainbow-colored beads were gone and now she wore her hair in natural curls. But those were the same large brown eyes behind her glasses and the same pretty face with the same full lips and the tiny mole on the bottom one, a beauty mark Allison had always envied.

“Can I help you?” Kendra said.

“Kendra,” Allison said with a nervous smile. “You probably don’t remember me. My name’s Allison. We used to live together with Dr. Capello in Oregon.”

Kendra’s eyes widened behind her glasses.

“I shouldn’t talk to you,” Kendra said.

“Why not?”

“I’m not one of you,” Kendra said, taking an uncertain step back as if she meant to shut the door.

“Well, technically I’m not one of them, either,” Allison said with an awkward shrug. “Last week was the first time I’d seen them in thirteen years.”

“So you didn’t go back to them? You’re not with them? Not one of the kids?”

“No. I promise. I’m not one of the kids. I left, too, remember?”

Kendra nodded slowly.

“What do you want?” Kendra asked.

This wasn’t the happy reunion Allison had hoped for.

“I was hoping I could talk to you. That’s all.”

“Do they know you’re here?” Kendra asked.

Allison instinctively knew “they” meant the whole family, the Capellos.

“I didn’t tell anyone I was coming. Can you give me just a couple minutes? Then I’ll go, I promise. We used to play together on the beach, remember? You taught me how to make sand castles. Yours were palaces and mine were shacks.”

“You weren’t very good at it,” Kendra said.

“No head for architecture.”

There was a pause, a long one, and then Kendra stepped back again, but this time she held open the door to let Allison inside.

“You’ll have to forgive the mess,” Kendra said.

The house was even nicer inside than outside. It looked like a page from a Pottery Barn catalog. The walls were a soothing gray with white crown molding and white wainscoting. The brown sofa matched the brown-and-gray rug, which matched the rather generic abstract pictures hanging on the wall. It was all spotlessly clean and tidy.

“The mess?” Allison said as she followed Kendra to the sofa. “Where?”

Kendra sat down and faced her across the coffee table. Computer coding books were arrayed on it in neat piles, and Allison remembered Roland saying that was her area of expertise these days.